Then the big cat appeared right in front of me. One minute my escape route was clear, and the next it was filled by a lion. The outside security lights were off, and in the moonlight the beast looked so beautiful and so deadly that fear pulled the air right out of my lungs.
The lion made a low, guttural sound.
“Go away,” I said. I had absolutely nothing to fight a lion with, and I was at the end of my rope. “Go away!” I yelled. “Get out of here!”
And it slunk into the bushes.
I don’t think that is typical lion behavior. Maybe it smelled the tiger coming, because a second or two later, Quinn appeared, moving like a huge silent dream across the grass. Quinn rubbed his big head against me, and we went over to the wall together. Andre laid down his queen and leaped up on top with grace and ease. For his queen, he pulled apart the razor wire with hands just barely cushioned with his torn coat. Then down he came and carefully lifted Sophie-Anne. He gathered himself and cleared the wall in a bound.
“Well, I can’t do that,” I said, and even to my own ears, I sounded grumpy. “Can I stand on your back? I’ll take my heels off.” Quinn snugged up to the wall, and I ran my arm through the sandal straps. I didn’t want to hurt the tiger by putting a lot of weight on his back, but I also wanted to get out of there more than I’ve wanted anything, just about. So, trying to think light thoughts, I balanced on the tiger’s back and managed to pull myself, finally, to the top of the wall. I looked down, and it seemed like a very long way to the sidewalk.
After all I’d faced this evening, it seemed stupid to balk at falling a few feet. But I sat on the wall, telling myself I was an idiot, for several long moments. Then I managed to flip over onto my stomach, let myself down as far as I could reach, and said out loud, “One, two, three!” Then I fell.
For a couple of minutes I just lay there, stunned at how the evening had turned out.
Here I was, lying on a sidewalk in historical New Orleans, with my boobs hanging out of my dress, my hair coming down, my sandals on my arm, and a large tiger licking my face. Quinn had bounded over with relative ease.
“Do you think it would be better to walk back as a tiger, or as a large naked man?” I asked the tiger. “Because either way, you might attract some attention. I think you stand a better chance of getting shot if you’re a tiger, myself.”
“That will not be necessary,” said a voice, and Andre loomed above me. “I am here with the queen in her car, and we will take you where you need to go.”
“That’s mighty nice of you,” I said, as Quinn began to change back.
“Her Majesty feels that she owes you,” Andre said.
“I don’t see it that way,” I said. Why was I being so frank, now? Couldn’t I just keep my mouth shut? “After all, if I hadn’t found the bracelet and given it back, the king would have . . .”
“Started the war tonight anyway,” Andre said, helping me to my feet. He reached out and quite impersonally pushed my right breast under the scanty lime-green fabric. “He would have accused the queen of breaking her side of the contract, which held that all gifts must be held in honor as tokens of the marriage. He would have brought suit against the queen, and she would have lost almost everything and been dishonored. He was ready to go either way, but when the queen was wearing the second bracelet, he had to go with violence. Ra Shawn set it off by beheading Wybert for bumping against him.” Ra Shawn had been Dreadlock’s name, I assumed.
I wasn’t sure I got all that, but I was equally sure Quinn could explain it to me at a time when I had more brain cells to spare for the information.
“He was so disappointed when he saw she had the bracelet! And it was the right one!” Andre said merrily. He was turning into a babbling brook, that Andre. He helped me into the car. “Where was it?” asked the queen, who was stretched across one of the seats. Her bleeding had stopped, and only the way she was holding her lips indicated what pain she was in.
“It was in the can of coffee that looked sealed,” I said. “Hadley was real good with arts and crafts, and she’d opened the can real carefully, popped the bracelet inside, and resealed it with a glue gun.” There was a lot more to explain, about Mr. Cataliades and Gladiola and Jade Flower, but I was too tired to volunteer information.
“How’d you get it past the search?” the queen asked. “I’m sure the searchers were checking for it.”
“I had the bracelet part on under my bandage,” I said. “The diamond stood out too far, though, so I had to prize it out. I put it in a tampon holder. The vampire who did the searching didn’t think of pulling out the tampon, and she didn’t really know how it was supposed to look, since she hadn’t had a period in centuries.”
“But it was put together,” the queen said.
“Oh, I went into the ladies room after I’d had my purse searched. I had a little tube of superglue in my purse, too.”
The queen didn’t seem to know what to say. “Thank you,” she told me, after a long pause. Quinn had climbed into the back with us, quite bare, and I leaned against him. Andre got into the driver’s seat, and we glided off.
He dropped us off in the courtyard. Amelia was sitting on the pavement in her lawn chair, a glass of wine in her hand.
When we emerged, she set the glass down very carefully on the ground and then looked us over from head to toe.
“Okay, don’t know how to react,” she said, finally. The big car glided out of the courtyard as Andre took the queen to some safe hideaway. I didn’t ask, because I didn’t want to know.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” I said. “The moving truck will be here tomorrow afternoon, and the queen promised me people to load it and drive it. I have to get back to Bon Temps.”
The prospect of going home seemed so sweet I could taste it on my tongue.
“So you got lots to do at home?” Amelia asked, as Quinn and I began going up the stairs. I guessed Quinn could sleep in the same bed. We were both too tired to plunge into anything; tonight was not the night to begin a relationship, if I hadn’t already begun one. Maybe I had.
“Well, I have a lot of weddings to go to,” I said. “I have to get back to work, too.”
“Got an empty guest bedroom?”
I stopped about halfway up the stairs. “I might. Would you be needing one?”
It was hard to tell in the poor light, but Amelia might be looking embarrassed. “I tried something new with Bob,” she said. “And it didn’t exactly work out right.”
“Where is he?” I asked. “In the hospital?”
“No, right there,” she said. She was pointing at a garden gnome.
“Tell me you’re joking,” I said.
“I’m joking,” she said. “This is Bob.” She picked up a big black cat with a white chest that had been curled up in an empty planter. I hadn’t even noticed him. “Isn’t he cute?”
“Sure, bring him along,” I said. “I’ve always been fond of cats.”
“Babe,” said Quinn, “I’m glad to hear you say that. I was too tired to completely change.”
For the first time, I really looked at Quinn.
Now he had a tail.
“You’re definitely sleeping on the floor,” I said.
“Ah, babe.”
“I mean it. Tomorrow you’ll be able to be all human, right?”
“Sure. I’ve changed too many times lately. I just need some rest.”
Amelia was looking at the tail with wide eyes. “See you tomorrow, Sookie,” she said. “We’ll have us a little road trip. And then I’ll get to stay with you for a while!”
“We’ll have such fun,” I said wearily, trudging up the rest of the stairs and feeling profoundly glad I’d stuck my door key in my underwear. Quinn was too tired to watch me retrieve it. I let the remnants of the dress fall back into place while I unlocked the door. “Such fun.”
Later, after I’d showered and while Quinn was in the bathroom himself, I heard a tentative knock on the door. I was decent enough in my sleep pants and tank top. Though I wanted to ignore it more than anything, I opened the door.
Bill was looking pretty good for someone who’d fought in a war. The tuxedo would never be functional again, but he wasn’t bleeding, and whatever cuts he might have sustained had already healed over.
“I have to talk to you,” he said, and his voice was so quiet and limp that I took a step out of the apartment. I sat down on the gallery floor, and he sat with me.
“You have to let me say this, just once,” he said. “I loved you. I love you.”
I raised a hand to protest, and he said, “No, let me finish. She sent me there, true. But when I met you—after I came to know you—I really . . . loved you.”
How long after he’d taken me to bed had this supposed love come about? How could I possibly believe him, since he’d lied so convincingly from the very moment I’d met him—playing disinterested because he could read my fascination with the first vampire I’d ever met?
“I risked my life for you,” I said, the words coming out in a halting sequence. “I gave Eric power over me forever, for your sake, when I took his blood. I killed someone for you. This is not something I take for granted, even if you do . . . even if that’s everyday existence for you. It’s not, for me. I don’t know if I can ever not hate you.”
I got up, slowly and painfully, and to my relief he didn’t make the mistake of trying to help me. “You probably saved my life tonight,” I said, looking down at him. “And I thank you for that. But don’t come into Merlotte’s any more, don’t hang around in my woods, and don’t do anything else for me. I don’t want to see you again.”
“I love you,” he said stubbornly, as if that fact were so amazing and such an undeniable truth that I should believe him. Well, I had, and look at where it had gotten me.
“Those words are not a magical formula,” I said. “They’re not going to open my heart to you.”
Bill was over a hundred and thirty years old, but at that moment I felt I could match him. I dragged myself inside, shut the door behind me and locked it, and made myself go down the hall to the bedroom.
Quinn was drying himself off, and he turned around to show me his muscular derriere. “Fur-free,” he said. “Can I share the bed?”
“Yes,” I said, and crawled in. He got in the other side, and he was asleep in thirty seconds. After a minute or two, I slid over in the bed and put my head on his chest.
I listened to his heartbeat.
23
W
HAT WAS THE DEAL WITH JADE FLOWER?” AMELIA asked the next day. Everett was driving the U-Haul, and Amelia and I were following in her little car. Quinn had left the next morning by the time I’d gotten up, leaving me a note telling me he was going to call me after he’d hired someone to take Jake Purifoy’s place and after his next job, which was in Huntsville, Alabama—a Rite of Ascension, he said, though I had no idea what that was. He ended the note with a very personal comment about the lime-green dress, which I won’t repeat here.
Amelia had her bags packed by the time I’d dressed, and Everett was directing two husky men in loading up the boxes I wanted to take back to Bon Temps. When he returned, he would take the furniture I didn’t want to Goodwill. I’d offered it to him, but he’d looked at the fake antiques and politely said they weren’t his style. I’d tossed my own stuff in Amelia’s trunk, and off we’d driven. Bob the cat was in his own cage on the backseat. It was lined with towels and also held a food and water bowl, which was kind of messy. Bob’s litter box was on the floorboard.
“My mentor found out what I’d done,” Amelia said gloomily. “She’s very, very unhappy with me.”
I wasn’t surprised, but it didn’t seem tactful to say so, when Amelia had been such a help to me.
“He is missing his life now,” I pointed out, as mildly as I could manage.
“Well, true, but he’s having a hell of an experience,” Amelia said, in the voice of someone determined to look on the bright side. “I’ll make it up to him. Somehow.”
I wasn’t sure this was something you could “make up” to someone. “I’ll bet you can get him back to himself soon,” I said, trying to sound confident. “There are some really nice witches in Shreveport who might help.” If Amelia could conquer her prejudice against Wiccans.
“Great,” the witch said, looking more cheerful. “In the meantime, what the hell happened last night? Tell me in detail.”
I figured it was all over the supernatural community today, so I might as well spill the beans. I told Amelia the whole story.
“So how did Cataliades know Jade Flower had killed Gladiola?” Amelia asked.
“Um, I told him,” I said, my voice small.
“How’d you know?”
“When the Pelts told me they hadn’t hired anyone to watch the house, I figured the murderer was someone sent by Peter Threadgill to delay my getting the message from Cataliades. Peter Threadgill knew all along that the queen had lost the bracelet to Hadley. Maybe he had spies among the queen’s own people, or maybe one of her dumber followers, like Wybert, let it slip. It wouldn’t be hard to watch the movements of the two goblin girls the queen used as messengers. When one of them came to deliver the queen’s message to me, Jade Flower followed her and killed her. The wound was pretty drastic, and after I saw Jade Flower’s sword and watched her whip it out so fast I couldn’t see it move, I figured she was a likely candidate for the designated killer. Plus, the queen had said if Andre was in New Orleans, everyone had to assume she was, too . . . so the reverse had to be true, right? If the king was in New Orleans, everyone would assume Jade Flower was, too. But she was outside my house, in the woods.” I shuddered all over at the memory. “I found out for sure after calling a lot of gas stations. I talked to a guy who definitely remembered Jade Flower.”
“So why did Hadley steal the bracelet?”
“Jealousy, I guess, and the desire to put the queen in a bad spot. I don’t think Hadley understood the implications of what she’d done, and by the time she did, it was too late. The king had laid his plans. Jade Flower watched Hadley for a while, snatched the opportunity to take Jake Purifoy and kill him. They hoped it would be blamed on Hadley. Anything that would discredit Hadley would discredit the queen. They had no way of knowing she would turn him.”